1. Field of the Invention
The subject disclosure relates to methods and systems for raffles via a distributed computing network, and more particularly to improved methods and systems for raffles being conducted within a single jurisdiction while utilizing the inherent distribution benefits of a distributed computing network and the innate demand and cost characteristics of high intangible value low tangible value assets.
2. Background of the Related Art
With regard to raffles and lotteries, the terms often being interchangeable, both have been used for thousands of years. Moses used a lottery to award land west of the River Jordan. Raffles have funded everything from the Great Wall of China to the first British settlement in North America, Jamestown Va. (interestingly, Anglican Churches held two of three winning tickets for the Jamestown lottery). In America, the continental congress used lotteries to fund the revolutionary war and John Hancock used a lottery to rebuild historic Faneuil Hall in Boston. From 1790 to the Civil War, 50 colleges, 300 schools and 200 churches were funded by lotteries, of these the most notable being Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.
However, from 1820 through 1878, corruption in privately operated lotteries became rampant and governments, unable to regulate these lotteries, began to prohibit them. The first state to do so being New York which passed a constitutional ban on lotteries in the 1820's. Many states followed and by 1878, the only state that allowed lotteries was Louisiana. In 1890, Congress banned all lottery material from the U.S. Mail and in 1895 Congress banned all lottery material from interstate commerce. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the states' use of police powers to control gaming to effectively end the Louisiana Lottery (which was a private lottery) and all other gambling.
In the 1950's, the U.S. Government began allowing charities to conduct certain types of gaming and, in 1964, the New Hampshire Legislature created a state lottery, the first legal state lottery in the 20th century. It was labeled a “Sweepstakes” and tied to horse races to avoid the 70 year-old federal anti-lottery statutes. In 1967, New York became the second state to attempt a lottery and several other states followed. In 1971, Automated Wagering implemented the worlds first on-line lottery system in New Jersey. Subsequently, several federal laws and U.S. Supreme Court rulings have allowed not only lotteries but also casino gambling to establish itself in the United States. These laws have also provided additional opportunities for non-profit charities to participate in gaming. However, while these laws have expanded lotteries and gaming in the United States, they have also sought to restrict interstate competition between State run lotteries and to prevent on-line casino gambling, which is operated from outside the United States.
As can be seen, raffles and lotteries have been widely used and well understood in the art. As noted above, in the United States, such devices are governed by state law. As a result, the ability to conduct an interstate raffle is limited by the requirement of needing to clear the legal hurdles in each and every state.
Further, prize winners for many raffles become disillusioned when they learn that a tax consequence results from the value of the prize. However, there are numerous assets that have little or no tangible value but an extremely high intangible value. These assets include such items as golfing with Tiger Woods, being the honorary captain of one of the Super Bowl teams, calling the coin toss for your team at the Super Bowl, or even having Easter Dinner with the Pope at the Vatican. Tens or even hundreds of millions of people worldwide would like to get one of these assets. Yet each of these assets is relatively unique and, thus, there is not enough supply necessary to meet the demand. Currently, the holders of these assets will at times, for charity, auction them off to the highest bidder.
The results of these auctions in general are less then stellar. For example, at a recent Sotheby's Auction for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, such assets were auctioned off at an average auction price of $7,500 and the highest price paid for any one item was $13,000 (results as presented on NBC's “The Apprentice” which aired on Feb. 12, 2004). The items auctioned off included a walk-on role on NBC's “Third Watch”, a day with Regis Philbin; an evening of disco bowling with the stars from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, and the item receiving the highest bid, dinner for fifty at Rocco DiSpirito's.
In recent times, the Internet has become recognized as an efficient means for connecting buyers and sellers of a variety of items. On-line retailers and auctioneers have had great success. The Internet has also been envisioned as a tool in many other consumer related transactional matters. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,572 to Riordan et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,604,681 to Burke et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,574,606 to Bell et al., each of which is incorporated herein by reference. However, attempts at using the Internet have not properly leveraged the technology to be successful. For example, see published U.S. Patent Application Nos. 2002/0152130 and 2001/0037239, each of which is incorporated herein by reference. One reason for the poor performance is that entities simply take the traditional raffles, for traditional types of prizes such as trips, televisions or automobiles, and simply move on-line. Although this created substantial savings in processing costs, such as printing tickets and the waste of left over tickets, what the entities failed to realize is that tickets were more often sold more on guilt than demand for the prize. Without additional drive of demand, the wider audience proved meaningless. Accordingly, traditional raffle profits are rarely above 32% of the gross proceeds with typical meager profits of $6,500 per raffle.